On 3/7/08, Florence Devouard <Anthere9(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
Thatcher131 Wikipedia wrote:
On Thu,
Mar 6, 2008 at 7:24 AM, Tony Sidaway <tonysidaway(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
On 04/03/2008, Alec Conroy
<alecmconroy(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The bigger problem are the allegations mentioned in the article
about
> use of foundation funds. Three specific
claims are made:
> -Jimbo tried to expense a $300+ bottle of wine
> -Jimbo tried to expense a massage parlor visit
> -Wikimedia foundation took away Jimbo's credit card.
>
I don't see the big deal here. Employees are entitled to fill in
expenses forms and their employers are permitted to say "Sorry Jimmy,
that's just outrageous".
Intentionally submitting a receipt to a non-profit charity which one
knows is unacceptable is unethical at best. However, "intentionally"
and "knows" are two key parts to that sentence which have not been
proven - in fact, the entire incident has merely been alleged.
Grrr. The allegation is that he used a Foundation credit card and did not
submit *any* receipts until forced by the auditors to do so. As part of
the
audit process, he repaid $7000. What would have
happened if the auditors
had not asked for the receipts?
That's incorrect. We have been requesting receipts from ALL board
members from the very beginning. Michael (treasurer and acting
accountant at that time) was extremely careful with that regards, and
submitted updates on receivables. The receipts were requested by the
treasurer, not by the auditors. Quite obviously though, doing the audit
pushed us to clean any pending submission. Which is, in a sense, the
main interest of an audit actually.
Just as a point of fact, your statement that what you are responding
to is incorrect, is inaccurate.
There was no statement that other people than the auditors had not
requested receipts. The question was on what precisely would have
happened, if the "asking" had not come from the auditors, rather than
the other people who were more or less intimately involved with Jimbo.
It is quite impossible that the auditors would not have expressed any
requirements for what they needed to be able to properly execute
their function. What precisely were the proper lines of communication
used, are immaterial. What matters is that if there was no real need
to document, to acheive clarity, would the real clarity have ever been
acheived?
There is a distinct difference between getting a request from somebody
with you are in a co-dependent relationship with (such as the whole board
and all the trustees within it), and getting the request from somebody who
(for better or worse) has more uncompromisible standards they have to
adhere to. (Such as professional standards.)
Your comment also neglects a key bit of context -
that we are talking
about a non-profit charity. A for-profit employer
is legally
permitted to reimburse just about anyone for just about anything. A
non-profit charity is not.
Precisely. It's only one
of those "Puritan" things because it is a non-profit organization. See
[[William Aramony]] and [[Oral Suer]].
It is small potatoes in comparison, and was apparently stopped, but it is
an indication that the Foundation did not exercise proper stewardship over
its finances until recently.
Unless you can bring proofs that we did not exercise proper stewardship,
I would hope that you will not claim as a fact that we did not.
Again, just as a point of fact, you are casting what you reply to inaccurately.
Tony is claiming there is an indication, not that there is a fact.
Inductive reasoning is strong, but not impregnable.
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]